The oxidation of cyclic sulfites or sulfamidites to cyclic sulfates or sulfamidate is an important transformation because of the great utilities of cyclic sulfates and cyclic sulfamidates in organic synthesis. For synthetic applications of cyclic sulfates, please see: (a) Gao, Y. and Sharpless K. B. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1988, 110, 7358. (b) Lohray, B. B.; Gao, Y.; Sharpless, K. B. Tetrahedron Lett. 1989, 30, 2623. (C) Kim, B. M.; Sharpless, K. B. Ibid., 1989, 30, 655. (d) Oi, R.; Sharpless, K. B. Ibid., 1991, 32, 999 and references cited therein. For synthetic applications of cyclic sulfamidates, please see: Baldwin, J. E.; Spivey, A. C.; Schofield, C. J. Tetrahedron: Asymmetry, 1990, 1, 881-884 and references cited therein. The oxidation reaction has been previously performed by using stoichiometric amounts of RuO.sub.4. Recently, Gao, et al have developed a process using catalytic amounts of RuCl.sub.3 and a stoichiometric amount of NaIO.sub.4 or NaOCI as the reoxidant for the spent ruthenium species (Gao, Y. and Sharpless, K. B. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1988, 110, 7538. However, this process involves of the use of expensive NaIO.sub.4 or strong alkali NaOCI solution, thus limiting its utility to laboratory scale reactions.
Recently, a double mediatory system consisting of RuO.sub.4 /RuO.sub.2 and Cl.sup.+ /Cl.sup.- redox couples has been used for the indirect electrooxidation of alcohols and aldehydes to the corresponding ketones or acids by Torri, et al. as reported in J. Org. Chem. 1986, 51, 155.
Thus, a catalytic scheme is needed for the electrooxidation of cyclic sulfites and sulfamidites to the corresponding cyclic sulfates and sulfamidates which is amendable to large scale production of product.